The present invention relates to mobile terminals, and more particularly, to methods of operating mobile terminals to provide multimedia services and related devices.
Mobile terminals are widely used to provide a variety of communications, multimedia, and/or data processing capabilities. For instance, mobile terminals, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and/or laptop computers, may provide storage and/or access to data in a wide variety of multimedia formats, including text, pictures, music, and/or video. As such, some mobile terminals may include tuner and/or decoder capabilities, thereby allowing mobile terminal users to receive multimedia signals that are broadcast over-the-air (OTA) via terrestrial and/or satellite transmission means. Some examples of signals which may be broadcast over-the-air include analog and/or digital television signals, AM/FM/digital radio signals, and/or Internet protocol broadcasts. In addition, other audio/video content, such as interactive games, music, and/or movies, may also be broadcast. As used herein, text, pictures, audio, and/or video data that may be broadcast over-the-air may be generally referred to as “media content.”
For example, Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds (DVB-H) is a digital TV service that may be implemented in mobile terminals in the near future. The DVB-H standard is used for broadcasting digital TV signals that are optimized for use in mobile terminals. As such, DVB-H services may be provided to mobile terminal users by a telecommunications service provider, for example, via a subscription-based pricing plan. In such a subscription-based plan, the service provider may provide a TV portal from which subscribers can retrieve frequencies and/or other information required to decode and/or otherwise access broadcast TV channels and/or program content that are available under the subscription.
However, some DVB-H channels may be publicly-accessible and/or otherwise “free” broadcast channels, which may be available to compatibly-equipped mobile terminals without payment therefor. For such free-to-air services, available channels in a particular location may be identified either by scanning the entire UHF frequency band (and/or other applicable frequency band) using the mobile terminal's tuner, or by searching the Internet for a channel list that describes available channels for the particular location and manually entering the channels/frequencies. For DVB-H and/or other digitally encoded signals, it may be relatively time-consuming to identify available channels by scanning, even when the frequency band is known. For example, a mobile terminal tuner may require about 5 minutes or more to identify DVB-H channels that are available at a particular location over a given frequency band. In addition, searching for a channel list for a given location on the Internet, for instance, using an Internet Search Engine, may be even more time-consuming.
As such, a user of a tuner-equipped mobile terminal may be required to perform such time-consuming channel searches in order to find available broadcast media channels every time he visits a new location. For mobile terminal users who frequently travel to different locations, performing such searches may become inconvenient and/or a nuisance.